Mecca agreement collective defence but sans any target, enemy: Türkiye’s Fidan

Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan has revealed that the defence agreement signed between Türkiye, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan in Mecca is technically equivalent to NATO’s Article 5 mutual defence clause but with a crucial distinction: it names no common enemy and targets no specific country.

Speaking in an exclusive interview with Anadolu on Saturday, Fidan offered the most detailed explanation yet of the landmark trilateral pact, which he described as a necessary response to growing instability across the region.

“The Mecca defence agreement is technically the same as NATO’s Article 5,” Fidan said, referring to the alliance’s collective defence provision that treats an attack on one member as an attack on all.

“The pact does not specify any common threat,” Fidan said, adding that the three nations entered the agreement out of a shared recognition that the region’s deepening instability required a structured collective defence framework.

No target, no aggression

Fidan was emphatic that the alliance was defensive in nature and expansionist in neither ambition nor design.

“No country is our target as long as they don’t attack member countries,” he said, drawing a clear red line between collective self-defence and offensive military posturing.

He also stressed that the character of all three signatories made the alliance inherently non-threatening to the broader region.